


Nothing Important Happened Today II

by scullywolf



Series: TXF: Scenes in Between [190]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-09-30 20:00:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20452745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf





	1. Chapter 1

_“Mulder can’t know. He can’t be brought back into this. He can’t be brought back into the FBI. It’s just too dangerous for him right now.”  
“It’s too dangerous for everyone.”_

Scully wraps her arms around herself and wonders for the thousandth time if maybe Mulder was right after all, about the threat against him being an act of misdirection. She had been so certain that she and William would be safe, had put so much faith in the fact that they had been left alone on the night of his birth. (“Maybe he isn’t what they thought he was,” Mulder had said, and she had clung to those words like a lifeline.) Now, though, she is not so sure. After what she witnessed yesterday, she isn’t sure of anything.

That isn’t entirely true; she is absolutely certain that she wishes Mulder were still here.

Of course, what she didn’t tell Skinner is that she can’t get in touch with Mulder no matter how much she wants to; the measures they put in place for emergency contact prioritize security over convenience, and he has to be the first one to reach out, from an anonymous email account he probably hasn’t yet had the chance to set up. Whether she likes it or not, she is on her own with this.

No. Not entirely on her own. Agent Doggett is still fighting for answers, and she’s grateful now that he refused to drop the investigation after she asked him to, before. Without him and Agent Reyes, she doesn’t know how she could find out what exactly is going on with William, and why. What he is, or isn’t. 

Whether they will be coming for him.

Her gaze is pulled to the bassinet. He looks so peaceful, sleeping there. So _normal_. But she cannot deny what she saw yesterday afternoon, the mobile over his crib spinning wildly and seemingly at his (possibly unconscious) command. It was deeply unnerving and anything _but_ normal. She cannot begin to guess at what it means, and there is no pediatrician in the world who would be able to give her any answers. The only place she might hope to find those answers is in the X-Files, but the very act of looking for them will be dangerous. The best chance she has of doing so without drawing too much scrutiny on herself and William is to seek them through the context of Agent Doggett’s investigation. Even that will be risky, but what choice does she have? She _needs_ to know.

Unfortunately, there is nothing she can do tonight but wait, which makes her feel both helpless and restless. With a worried shake of her head, she surrenders to habit and walks toward the kitchen to make some tea.

***

24 HOURS EARLIER

Mulder’s eyes fly open as the bus comes to a stop, air brakes hissing. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. His heart pounds as he struggles, briefly, to determine where he is, how long he slept, and whether he’s been found. A quick check of his watch answers the second question (about half an hour), and he squints into the darkness outside, trying to answer the other two.

“Rest stop,” says the tired-sounding driver over the intercom. “You got fifteen minutes.”

The bus’s interior lights flick on, and Mulder glances warily at his fellow passengers, under the guise of stretching his back. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, but it’s not as though anyone following him is going to be super obvious about it. Picking up the backpack tucked between his feet, he stands, easing his way into the aisle and off the bus. He hefts the backpack onto his shoulder and looks around, breathing in the crisp night air.

The rest area parking lot is far from empty, despite the hour. The bus is parked amid a line of big rigs, and a handful of smaller vehicles sit on the other side of the lot, along the curb near the restrooms. What draws his attention, however, is the motorcycle idling a few yards away. Not just because it’s out of place among the large trucks, but because he’s seen it before, outside the station when he changed buses a few hundred miles back, the rider recognizable by the long hair streaming out from under his helmet.

So much for a tail not being obvious about it.

He pretends not to notice and starts walking toward the restrooms, wondering what his options are, here. With that hair, the guy’s not FBI, so chances are slim he’s one of the men Kersh warned about. Doesn’t mean he’s not working for them, though, or that he’s not _like_ them. Doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous. Mulder’s odds of survival, if he tries to bolt now on foot, are not great. If he gets back on the bus, the guy will undoubtedly keep following, but maybe Mulder will be able to lose him in a crowd at the next big station. It’s not ideal, but it might be the best he can hope for.

“Hey! I need to talk to you!”

The words are muffled by the helmet and the engine noise, but Mulder can just make them out anyway. Again, he pretends not to notice and just keeps walking.

“Stop, please! You’re in danger, and I’m trying to help you!”

_This_ gives him pause. Could certainly be a trap, but… what if it’s not? Cautiously, he stops and turns around. Half a dozen bus passengers are headed his way, though none of them seem to be paying attention to him or the long-haired man on the bike. The man slowly rides up beside him and tugs his helmet off.

He’s just a kid. Now Mulder’s _really_ confused.

“Who are you? Why are you following me?”

The boy looks nervously toward the parked cars, then back at Mulder. “My friend sent me to find you. You helped him before, and now he’s worried that your life is in danger. I’m supposed to bring you to him. But we’ve got to go, _now_. I’m not the only one who’s been following you.”

He jerks his chin toward the cars; frowning, Mulder turns to see a gray sedan with the driver’s side window rolled down. Even at this distance, he immediately recognizes the person behind the wheel. It’s Agent Crane.

“Shit,” he says, his stomach plummeting with dread and disbelief.

“Come on, let’s go!” says the boy, quickly strapping his helmet back on.

Mulder hesitates only for a moment before climbing onto the bike. His suitcases are, of course, all still loaded under the bus, but there’s no time and no way to carry them now. He’s got the backpack, at least, which is carrying the various fake IDs he got from the Gunmen and a not insubstantial amount of cash. It’s still a risk to take this kid at his word, but it’s one he’s willing to accept given that the alternative is a confrontation with Agent Crane.

Just before they speed off, he shouts, “Who’s this friend of yours who sent you looking for me?”

“Gibson!” the boy calls back. “Gibson Praise!”


	2. Chapter 2

(post-episode)

Shaking their pursuer is not as easy as Mulder would have liked. The gray sedan is no match for the motorcycle in terms of agility and versatility, yet Agent Crane manages to find them again after not one, but two attempts at off-road evasion. The third attempt leaves them almost hopelessly lost, themselves. When they finally emerge from the woods somewhere in eastern Oklahoma, they are hungry, exhausted, and nearly out of fuel, but they are also alone.

Mulder won’t go so far as to assume it will stay that way, but for now, he will take the wins where he can get them. It has been a difficult few days, to say the least.

In the short time they’ve known each other, Mulder has learned only two things about his long-haired rescuer -- his name is Michael, and he’s a friend of Gibson Praise. He seems afraid to tell Mulder exactly where they’re headed; his only answer to that question is the slightly ominous “somewhere they can’t follow us.” They’ve been tracking south and west since they left the Vermont rest area, though. This is a significant departure from Mulder’s original plan, which was to travel by bus as close as he could get to the Canadian border, then find a place to cross in some sleepy New England border town where his fake ID wouldn’t be scrutinized too closely. Getting out of the country, at least temporarily, seems like the safest option, but when he asked Michael if they were headed to Mexico instead, the boy shook his head mutely and refused to elaborate further.

They limp the bike to a gas station, coasting in on fumes. Mulder goes inside to buy them some food while Michael fills the tank. They retreat back to the cover and safety of the woods to eat, rest and regroup, and Mulder tries again to draw some more information out of the boy.

“How did you find me, anyway?”

“I followed you,” Michael says with a shrug. “Gibson told me where to go.”

Mulder frowns. “Gibson knew I’d be at a bus station in Syracuse, New York? Hell, _I_ didn’t even know I’d be there.”

“No, before then. When you got in the taxi outside your partner’s house.”

_Outside your partner’s house. He’s been following since the very beginning._

This revelation hits Mulder like a truck, and his brain starts racing to connect the dots. If Michael if he saw him get in that taxi, then he must have been sitting outside Scully’s apartment for a while. He feels a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck, anxiety spiking at the idea that Scully’s place was being surveilled. (He won’t admit in the moment that he is _more_ upset that it was being surveilled _and he didn’t notice_.) Why in the hell would Gibson Praise, of all people, have sent someone to sit and watch them? It doesn’t make sense.

“You mean you were watching us in DC before I even left? Are you telling me _Gibson_ sent you to spy on us, to spy on Scully? I’m supposed to believe that?”

He’s been taking this boy at his word that he knows Gibson, but what if that’s all a lie, and his _real_ intention is to draw Mulder away in the wrong direction so that Scully and William are left unprotected? 

“No!” Michael’s eyes go wide, and he shakes his head emphatically. _Because I caught him in his lie? _“Look, he just said you might be in trouble, and he couldn’t come himself to check on you, because then he’d be in trouble too. So he asked me to go. He gave me two addresses, and there wasn’t anyone at the first one, and when I got to the second one, that’s when I saw you leaving. So I followed.” 

“You followed.” The derision drips from his words, and his volume begins to escalate. “You followed, through six states and two bus changes before you finally got around to giving me this ‘warning’ you were supposedly sent to deliver? Or was that ‘warning’ just a lie to make me trust you after I caught you tailing me? Why don’t you cut the bullshit and tell me what’s really going on and who you’re _really_ working for?”

No wonder Agent Crane has been able to find them again every time they have tried to evade him. This boy is working for him. It all makes sense now.

“You don’t understand! That’s not how it was!”

Michael bursts into tears and shrinks away from him, which snaps Mulder out of his spiral. He blinks, shame settling over him like a pall, as he watches the boy fight to keep his sobs in check and realizes how very unhinged he sounded just now.

_What the hell is wrong with you? He’s just a kid, for god’s sake, not some criminal mastermind._

“Okay.” He takes a shaky breath, then another, still wary, but determined to try and keep his cool, hear the kid out. “You know what? You’re right, Michael. I don’t understand, but I’m trying to. Can you help me understand?”

Michael is quiet for a while, rubbing at his eyes and sniffling occasionally. Mulder passes him another SlimJim and waits, opening a bag of sunflower seeds for himself. He lets the familiar bite of salt on his tongue, the crack of the hulls between his teeth, help him regain his equilibrium.

Finally, Michael speaks up again, haltingly. “I thought… I thought you knew. About the danger. I thought you were going someplace safe, and if I just followed you there, then I could tell you what Gibson said, and it would be okay. Then if you wanted to go with me you could, but if you were safe where you were, then that would be okay too.”

“But you weren’t the only one following me,” Mulder adds quietly.

“I was at first. Pretty sure, anyway. But then that car started following your bus somewhere in… Massachusetts, I think? I don’t know how they found you, but… when they stuck with the bus all the way into Vermont, I knew it had to be the bad guys Gibson warned about.”

Mulder sighs again. He must have gotten picked up by a security camera in the bus station, even though he tried to keep his face down. Once Crane knew where he was and which bus he was boarding, it would have been trivial to grab a flight to some point ahead on the route and just wait for the bus to pass. 

“And Scully?” he asks, his voice tight. “Are the bad guys after her, too? Are they after the baby?”

“I don’t think so. At least, Gibson doesn’t think so. He only said they wanted you.”

It’s consistent with what Kersh told them, he has to reluctantly concede. But it still doesn’t make any sense.

“Did Gibson tell you how he knew about this danger?”

Michael hesitates, taking a drink of water and looking around nervously. “You know how he… hears things? I mean, that other people are thinking?” Mulder nods, and Michael continues. “About six months ago, he started being able to hear people who were really far away. But just certain people. People who used to be… human. But now they’re not.”

_The returned abductees. The replacements. Billy Miles and the rest of the so-called super soldiers._

“And he heard these people thinking about wanting to hurt me?”

“That’s what he said,” Michael says with a shrug. “Something about how you were supposed to be like them, but it didn’t work, and so…”

He trails off, and Mulder waits for more, but nothing comes. This conversation has been, by far, the longest he’s had with Michael since they met, and the toll it has taken on the boy is clear. (Not to mention the toll Mulder’s outburst has taken on him.) He startles when Mulder lays a hand on his shoulder, eyes wide and scared.

“Thank you,” Mulder says. “I mean that. I’m sorry about getting upset with you, before. You did the right thing.”

Michael nods, distrust still clear on his face, but he doesn’t pull away.

“Why don’t you get some rest? I’ll keep watch.”

The boy shakes his head, moving to stand up. “I’m okay. We should keep going, before that man catches up again.”

Mulder groans inwardly at the thought of getting back on the motorcycle, particularly since he doesn’t know how much farther they have to go. 

“And you still don’t want to tell me where we’re headed?” 

Michael looks around nervously. “Gibson told me not to say, because you never know who’s listening, and if they know where we’re going, they can get ahead of us and catch us.”

It is a sensible, if frustrating, answer. “But we’re in the woods, Michael. No one’s listening.”

“He said not to count on that. They have ways of hearing things that regular people can’t.”

“You mean like Gibson can hear things?”

“Sort of. I don’t know, he didn’t really explain it.”

Mulder sighs. “Can you at least tell me why you said that they can’t follow us where we’re going?”

There is another long pause, and Mulder is about to give up on getting an answer when Michael finally says, in a near-whisper, “There’s something in the ground. It won’t hurt us, but… if the bad guys go there, they die.”


End file.
